Peter Heck video - "The Sound of Abortion"

I find most people who are pro choice to have a psychological bias. What I mean by that is that for them, the unborn fetus is not tangible. In other words, people who are pro choice have no emotional connection. They will be all up in arms when they see one of those aspca commercials, but seem to drop the ball on abortion because they think they know when life begins

Funny, I think the same thing about people who call themselves "pro-life" (which is a joke).

ANd for the record, I loathe aspca and christian children's fund commercials because they're emotionally manipulative.

However, I do feel that forcing a woman to complete any pregnancy regardless of ANY circumstances is essentially implying that her uterus is the most important thing about her, and is her true purpose. How could it not imply that?

I'm not sure if it implies that. I think that people who hold such a view tend to hold nuns in a pretty high regard. It would be a stretch to think they view a nun's uterus as the most important thing about her.

The point is that the type of abortions pro-choicers are most comfortable with is when it's just cells. We disapprove of later-term abortions even more than early ones. But even then I don't want rights restricted just because I disapprove.

My point was that you characterized all abortions as equivalent to terminating undifferentiated clumps of non-sentient cells. There is a lot of nuance in people's positions on this. Just because a person wants more restrictions on abortions doesn't necessarily mean that s/he thinks all abortions ought to be restricted. For example, I've known people who argue for allowing first trimester abortions but none thereafter (outside of cases where the mother's health is in danger).

We're trying to bring down crime and increase contraception use now, why do you think we could suddenly be much better at it in the future? Wouldn't we already be succeeding if we knew how, or had the right support? And I really don't like how cold you come off when considering "Some women will suffer, we'll have more kids that parents cannot afford, we'll have more kids born into poverty, and, eventually, crime will probably increase."

Well, the reason I bring up increasing access to contraception is because I agree that we can't restrict abortion and pretend everything will be okay. And an all-too-common position among pro-lifers is abstinence-only sex education. That would be an example of wanting to restrict abortion and pretending it will be okay. I was saying that pro-lifers need to stop stonewalling proper sex education. We don't know the effect that good sex ed and easily available contraception would have in this country because, frankly, we haven't had that yet.

As for being "cold" I'm trying to remain dispassionate. I am aware of the negative consequences that restricting abortion will likely lead to and we should make every effort to mitigate those consequences. But those negative consequences don't necessarily factor in to whether abortion should be restricted. If abortion is morally wrong, it's morally wrong regardless if abortions help control the crime rate and so on. An oft-used example is that of a doctor with 5 dying patients, each needing a different organ transplant to survive. If a healthy person walks into the clinic, is it morally permissible for the doctor to kill the healthy patient and use his/her organs to save the 5 dying patients? Most people would say that's not okay even though the negatives outweigh the positives (at least in terms of number of lives saved/lost).

There's just no logical basis for pre-birth personhood.

Here's my logical basis for pre-birth personhood. If infants are persons (which isn't open-and-shut by any means even if we treat them that way legally), then a full-term fetus should be a person. After all, the only difference is a trip through a birth canal which doesn't strike as a logical basis for conferring personhood. It seems entirely arbitrary.

IWe don't put them down without good reason.

The point is that whether or not a being has the capability to suffer doesn't really affect whether or not we're willing to terminate its life.---Locke: "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" || Jack "Why do you find it so easy?!" ||Locke: "It's never been easy!"

Here's my logical basis for pre-birth personhood. If infants are persons (which isn't open-and-shut by any means even if we treat them that way legally), then a full-term fetus should be a person. After all, the only difference is a trip through a birth canal which doesn't strike as a logical basis for conferring personhood. It seems entirely arbitrary.

Here's my logical basis for pre-birth personhood. If infants are persons (which isn't open-and-shut by any means even if we treat them that way legally), then a full-term fetus should be a person. After all, the only difference is a trip through a birth canal which doesn't strike as a logical basis for conferring personhood. It seems entirely arbitrary

Or maybe its a process, and the entire development is a march from the single celled organism to the person?

Unless youre claiming there is an infinitely small point of transition, the idea of the transition taking time doesnt seem hard to swallow. In this case, 9 months, and when it is finished, the child is born.---One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Platohttp://tinyurl.com/JoinThisIRunIt

All of these would fit no matter how you view the embryo. Having to work to make money is a necessary evil.(Well maybe not if you really, really love your job)

cyclonekruse posted...

An oft-used example is that of a doctor with 5 dying patients, each needing a different organ transplant to survive. If a healthy person walks into the clinic, is it morally permissible for the doctor to kill the healthy patient and use his/her organs to save the 5 dying patients? Most people would say that's not okay even though the negatives outweigh the positives (at least in terms of number of lives saved/lost).

Funny you should say that. Let's alter it a bit. If another person is brought into the hospital and dies, is it morally permissible to use his organs which will simply be eaten to save the 5 dying patients if he wasn't an organ donor?

Pro-lifers are all for the government forcing women to lend their organs to a developing embryo, but where is this right to life for those 5 dying people who can be saved by a corpse?---The food that stands on his [Odin's] table he gives to two wolves of his called Geri and Freki. He himself needs no food; wine is for him both drink and meat.

Clearly there are major differences between a third trimester fetus and a first/second trimester one.

Faust wanted a logical basis for pre-birth personhood. Third trimester is still pre-birth. So all I need to do is provide a logical basis for treating a third trimester fetus as a person.---Locke: "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" || Jack "Why do you find it so easy?!" ||Locke: "It's never been easy!"

Funny you should say that. Let's alter it a bit. If another person is brought into the hospital and dies, is it morally permissible to use his organs which will simply be eaten to save the 5 dying patients if he wasn't an organ donor?

Pro-lifers are all for the government forcing women to lend their organs to a developing embryo, but where is this right to life for those 5 dying people who can be saved by a corpse?

That's a fair question. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to the doctor using the organs. But I hadn't considered it much so I would want to see some counterpoints first before making a firmer decision. A couple of differences I immediately see is that the dead person probably didn't have a hand in the five patients' issues whereas the mother usually had a part in the pregnancy and the doctor would be taking organs permanently while pregnancy is only 9ish months long. Whether those differences ultimately affect the morality of each act I'm not sure yet.

On a somewhat related note, we could pretty much solve our organ donor problems if it were an opt-out program rather than an opt-in one. Saw it in a TED video.---Locke: "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" || Jack "Why do you find it so easy?!" ||Locke: "It's never been easy!"

I think that's fair enough. I mean, a fetus in the third trimester is sentient, can feel pain, and can even live outside of the womb in the case of premature birth.

Sentience I'm not so sure about. The first thing to do is figure out what you mean by "sentience" though because it's a tough thing to define.

It can feel pain, yes, but I'm not sure how meaningful that is. Animals we slaughter for food can feel pain too. That (at least alone) doesn't seem to determine whether or not it is acceptable to terminate a life. Especially if we end the life in a painless way.

And the ability to live outside the womb isn't the best metric for personhood either, IMO. It seems attractive at first because it doesn't seem like an arbitrary thing, but it kinda is arbitrary. How do premature babies survive outside the womb? With the help of modern medicine. And we're able to save younger and younger fetuses all the time. It's not a terribly big assumption the think that eventually we'll be able to grow humans ex utero at any stage of development. So "surviving outside the womb" is simply determined by how good our technology is. That doesn't seem to be a good marker for personhood.

My argument is pretty simple. If a newborn is a person, then a full-term fetus is a person because there's no appreciable difference in them other than location, one in a womb and one not. That's the basis for pre-birth personhood.---Locke: "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" || Jack "Why do you find it so easy?!" ||Locke: "It's never been easy!"

I dunno, I'd rather you call me a misogynist than a genocidal baby killer. I feel one carries a little more weight than the other. I've known misogynists. My father's a misogynist. I've never met someone who gets pleasure from killing babies, but I imagine such a person would be noticeably less pleasant.

Hey now, I feel ya. But take a look at this (I snagged this from the Politics board.)

"pro-'lifers' are scum who only pretend to care about abortion as an excuse to punish women who fail in their duty as docile obedient babymakers"

Both sides manage to piss pretty good, if you ask me. I think this contest is a neck and neck race!

There is a considerable difference between implying that someone has a negative view towards women and implying that someone takes pleasure in the unmitigated slaughter of countless babies. I'm not saying either are justified, but one is a bit more extreme than the other.

Unless, of course, the subject in question actually is a misogynist or a baby mass murderer. I've seen a few on the pro-life that I would definitely call misogynists - not many at all, of course, but a small few. How many on the pro-choice side have you seen that are actual, real baby slaughtering psychopaths?---X-Men: First Class RPG - Welcoming all new players![http://s1.zetaboards.com/New_Mutants/index/]